ERIC EJ936743: Teacher Education Admission Criteria as Measure of Preparedness for Teaching

2011·0.11 MB·English

by  ERIC

Teacher Education Admission Criteria as Measure of
Preparedness for Teaching

Catherine Casey
University of Manitoba

Ruth Childs
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Abstract
This study investigated the relationship between commonly used admission criteria, found
in a one-year, post Bachelor’s degree, initial, teacher education program, and the
preparedness of teacher candidates in mathematics for independent teaching. The admission
criteria used in this study were grade point average (GPA) and a written profile. The profile
was not significantly related with either the assessment of practice teaching or
preparedness. However, entering GPAs predicted only between five and 12 per cent of
variance in course instructors’ judgements of teacher candidates’ preparedness in three of
five areas: Promote Student Learning, Critical Thinking, and Use of Technology. Ratings of
preparedness by instructors, associate teachers, and the teacher candidates themselves
suggested that teacher candidates were adequately to well-prepared in all areas. This
finding is possibly due to the restriction of range of GPA and overall success for all teacher
candidates. Further research is needed utilizing unique approaches to draw substantive
conclusions that entering GPA or ratings of applicants responses to a written profile have
predictive value for successful student teaching performance. Implications for initial
teacher education program admissions are discussed.

Key words: teacher education, admission criteria, teacher preparedness

Résumé
Cette étude explore le lien entre les critères d’admission couramment utilisés pour un
programme de formation initiale à l’enseignement d’un an après le baccalauréat et la
mesure dans laquelle les candidats sont prêts à enseigner d’une manière autonome les
mathématiques. Les critères d’admission analysés dans cette étude étaient la moyenne
pondérée cumulative (MPC) et un profil écrit de chaque candidat. Le profil n’était pas relié
d’une manière significative à l’évaluation du stage pédagogique ou de l’état de préparation
des stagiaires. Pour ce qui est des MPC des candidats, leur valeur prédictive expliquait
seulement de 5 à 12 % de la variance dans les opinions des moniteurs de cours au sujet de
l’état de préparation des stagiaires dans trois domaines sur cinq, à savoir la promotion de
l’apprentissage des élèves, la pensée critique et l’utilisation de la technologie. Les
évaluations de l’état de préparation des stagiaires par les moniteurs, les enseignants
associés et les stagiaires eux-mêmes semblent indiquer que la préparation des stagiaires

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 34, 2 (2011): 3-20
©2011 Canadian Society for the Study of Education/
Société canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation
4 C. CASEY & R. CHILDS
était de « adéquate » à « excellente ». Ce résultat s’explique probablement par
l’homogénété des MPC des candidats et le succès global de tous les stagiaires. Il faudra
d’autres recherches faisant appel à des approches pertinentes pour pouvoir conclure
nettement que le MCP des candidats ou l’évaluation des réponses des candidats à un
questionnaire écrit relatif à leur profil a une valeur prédictive à l’égard du succès des
stagiaires. Les auteurs analysent en outre les implications pour les admissions à des
programmes de formation initiale à l’enseignement.

Mots clés : formation à l’enseignement, critères d’admission, préparation des stagiaires en
enseignement.
TEACHER EDUCATION ADMISSION CRITERIA 5
Teacher Education Admission Criteria as Measure of
Preparedness for Teaching

Introduction

The number of students applying for admission to teacher education programs in
Ontario far exceeds the number of positions available in those programs and the teaching
jobs available upon graduation (Ontario College of Teachers [OCT], 2003). For admission,
programs, therefore, must select applicants from a very large pool. The choice of admission
criteria affects not only which applicants are admitted but ultimately which have the
opportunity to become a teacher.
Although admission criteria vary across programs, surveys of initial teacher
education programs across North America suggest that many programs base their
admission decisions on some combination of applicants’ (a) previous academic
performance (e.g., grade point average), (b) essays describing relevant experiences and
interest in teaching (these essays are sometimes called an applicant profile), and (c) letters
of recommendation, interviews or standardized test results (Laman & Reeves, 1983;
Petersen & Speaker, 1996). Of Ontario’s 13 publicly-funded faculties of education, all
require academic transcripts, from which admission officers compute an applicant’s grade
point average (GPA); 12 programs require applicants to submit some form of written
profile (the exception is Lakehead University); three – Trent University, University of
Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), and York University – require reference letters;
and two – UOIT and York – use interviews (Teacher Education Application Service
[TEAS], 2010).
How can teacher educators tell whether a program’s admission cri-teria are effective? If
a primary purpose of teacher education is to prepare individuals to be successful teachers
(defining success in teaching is beyond the scope of this article; see, however,
Fenstermacher and Richardson, 2005, for a discussion of the complexity of defining teacher
success), then studies of how well a program’s admission criteria predict its graduates’
eventual success as teachers could provide important inform-ation about the effectiveness
of the admission criteria. From a research design perspective, the ideal study would follow
all or a random sample of applicants through an initial teacher education program, whether
or not they met admission criteria, and then into the classroom as independent teachers.
Such a study is clearly impractical (in Ontario, initial teacher education programs cannot
accommodate all applicants and schools cannot hire all graduates) and possibly unethical.1
Studies that have followed graduates of initial teacher education programs (for example, a
recent study by four Ontario Faculties of Education, Herbert et al., 2010) have often relied
on self-reported teaching experiences, rather than formal evaluations of teaching, which can
be expensive to perform for a study, difficult to obtain from other sources, and for which
teachers may be unwilling to consent.2 Studies have been further limited by restriction of

1 Providing initial teacher education to a random sample of applicants rather than attempting to select
applicants on the basis of some criteria is a questionable use of resources; students should not be assigned
to the classrooms of teachers who may not be adequately prepared to teach independently.
2 Some studies relating the results of standardized tests used in many U.S. states for entrance to initial
teacher education programs and for certification to teaching perform-ance have performed independent
6 C. CASEY & R. CHILDS
range on the admission criteria caused by their use for selection and by the fact that some
graduates do not seek, and many grad-uates do not obtain, teaching jobs, and so it is not
possible to find out how well they would perform as teachers. In summary, studies of
admission criteria have three principal limitations: (a) restriction of range on the admission
criteria because only applicants who met the criteria were admitted, (b) loss of some of the
graduates because they did not obtain teaching jobs, and (c) reliance on self-reported
teaching exper-iences because of difficulties obtaining formal evaluations of teaching.
This study takes a different approach to investigate admission cri-teria. We have chosen
to use pre-graduation proxies for post-graduation independent teaching performance.
Although these proxies – (a) per-formance in the two practice teaching blocks, and (b)
judgements of the teacher candidates’ preparedness for independent teaching by the teacher
candidate, a course instructor, and the associate teacher– are imperfect substitutes for
formal evaluations of independent teaching after graduation, their use makes possible the
inclusion of all teacher candidates. The study, which was performed in a one-year, post-
Bachelor’s degree teacher education program in Ontario, investigated, for teacher
candidates specializing in mathematics, the relationships among (a) admission cri-teria
(grade point average and ratings of applicant profiles), (b) perform-ance in practice
teaching, and (c) perceived preparedness for independent teaching. Although other studies
have investigated the relationship of admission criteria to practice teaching, few have
examined the relationship with judgments of preparedness (Casey & Childs, 2007).
In the next sections, we summarize the existing research on the use of GPA and written
profiles as admission criteria. We also describe previous research on the prediction of
success in practice teaching and judgements of preparedness for teaching.

Literature Review
Grade Point Average
GPA is the most widely used means of assessing and accepting students into teacher
education programs (Lawrence & Crehan, 2001; Mikitovics & Crehan, 2002). GPA is
typically viewed as indicative of the ability to succeed in an educational setting. In addition,
GPA is readily available from applicants’ transcripts. According to the latest study from the
National Center for Education Information survey (Feistritzer, 1989) more than 75 per cent
of the 1,287 responding teacher education programs in the United States used college GPA
as a criterion for admission. In Canada, several universities use weighted GPA combined
with other criteria (Smith & Pratt, 1996). As Smith and Pratt note, “The practice conforms
with the conventional academic practice; rejected applicants rarely challenge it” (p. 43).
However, although GPA is the most used measure for entrance into teacher education
programs in universities, it is not un-equivocally accepted as valid criterion for admission
(Byrnes, Kiger, & Shechtman, 2003; Salzman, 1991).
Olstad, Beal, Noe, and Schaefer (1983), who conducted one of the first studies to
investigate the predictive value of the GPA for success in practice teaching, rated teacher
candidates’ success in practice teaching as high, medium, or low, based on the rank
orderings of students by their university-based, practice teaching supervisors. They found

observations or obtained principals’ ratings of beginning teacher performance, but have not included other
admission criteria; see D’Agostino & Powers, 2009, for a summary.
TEACHER EDUCATION ADMISSION CRITERIA 7
that GPA was a significant predictor of success in practice teaching. How-ever, most
subsequent studies have not found a strong relationship between GPA and performance in
practice teaching (Demetrulias, Chiodo, & Diekman, 1990; Salzman, 1991; Webster,
1988). Of course, when academic admission standards are set very high so that the range of
GPAs is truncated, the reduced variance in GPA makes it difficult to observe a relationship
with other variables. The fact that we do not know how the applicants who were screened
out because of low GPAs would have performed, had they been admitted, makes it difficult
to determine whether the minimum GPA is appropriate.
A strong relationship between GPA and overall success in an initial teacher
education program has been found by several investigators (Basom, Rush, & Machell,
1994; Caskey, Petersen, & Temple, 2001; Lawrence & Crehan, 2001). However the
literature on this topic is far from unanimous (Byrnes et al., 2003; Smith & Pratt, 1996). It
may be that GPA is indicative of academic skills that are useful in completing the
coursework portion of the teacher education programs (Casey & Childs, 2007).
Written Profiles
The second most used measure for admission into teacher education programs is a
written profile, in which applicants describe experiences related to teaching and reflect on
their interest in teaching. A profile may also ask for information about (a) previous
academic successes, (b) personal characteristics, (c) employment and training, (d) volunteer
or service experiences, (e) work with diverse groups, (f) languages spoken, (g) special
skills, and (h) leadership roles. Such a profile may elicit information that could also be
obtained in an interview.
Caskey et al. (2001) suggest that profiles can reveal applicants’ (a) motivation
related to pupil needs, as opposed to self interest, (b) congruence with the program and
mission of the institution, (c) vision of need or quality in schools, and (d) ability to
communicate in a compelling manner in writing. According to Smith and Pratt (1996), at
Queen’s University, applicants’ profiles were read for evidence of a history of commitment
and recorded ability to work with others in helping capacities. However, Smith and Pratt
found that whether the profile was typed, the gender of the applicant, and travel experiences
ratings also influenced assessors’ rating.
Practice Teaching Performance
Teacher education programs typically consist of formal instruction and
complementary opportunities for supported practice. The latter, often referred to as student
teaching or practice teaching, is the most universal component of teacher education
programs and usually involves teaching under the supervision of a classroom teacher, often
with support from the teacher education program’s instructors. Although practice teaching
is considered essential for the development of pedagogical knowledge and skills (Darling-
Hammond, 2006), evaluations of practice teaching have not been found to be good
predictors of subsequent teaching performance (Millman & Darling-Hammond, 1990). This
may be, in part, because practice teaching evaluations are typically performed by the
associate teacher, who supervises the practice teaching and whose exper-ience observing
teacher candidates is limited to her or his own classroom.
8 C. CASEY & R. CHILDS

Preparedness for Teaching
Asking teacher candidates and those who have had an opportunity to observe them
during their teacher education program to rate their preparedness to teach, while not a
substitute for measures of their actual post-graduation performance as independent
teachers, may nevertheless provide useful information. Furthermore, it has the advantage of
potentially including all teacher candidates, including those who may not seek or get
teaching jobs after graduation.
The most influential research on preparedness was an American national study of
teacher education programs in 1997 by the National Center for Restructuring Education,
Schools, and Teaching. The survey items were based on work by L. Darling-Hammond in
1992 (personal com-munication, 2004) in which she described and analyzed learner-centred
standards for schools and standards set by the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards, and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Standards.
An adaptation of this survey, developed by Silvernail (1998) and consisting of subscales
measuring preparedness to Promote Student Learning, Teach Critical Thinking and Social
Development, Use Technology, Understand Learners, and Develop Instructional
Leadership, was subsequently used to assess the preparedness of teachers in New York
City. According to the results of the New York City Teacher Survey, new teachers who had
state certification were more likely to feel well-prepared in (a) subject area knowledge, (b)
use of instructional strategies, (c) proficiency in educational technology, and (d) effective
classroom management (Imbimbo & Silvernail, 1999). However, most teachers felt that
they were not well-prepared to help all students achieve high academic standards,
especially upon initial entry to the classroom. Teachers who did not have state certification,
or had not completed a teacher education program, felt significantly less prepared than
those who had completed formal teacher education training. In addition, these teachers felt
particularly ill-prepared or inadequate in the use of educational technology and how to meet
the needs of new English language users.
The Present Study
The present study evaluates whether two common admission criteria used by a
teacher education program, entering GPA and a written profile, are predictive of practice
teaching performance and judgments of teacher candidate preparedness for teaching.
Although 12 of the 13 Ontario teacher education programs use both GPA and a profile as
admission criteria, the research examining the combination of these criteria is very limited.
In addition, no Canadian studies and only a few international studies have examined the
relationship of the admission criteria to judgments (by the teacher candidates, their
instructors, and the associate teachers with whom they did their practice teaching) of
teacher candidates’ preparedness to teach at the end of a teacher education program.
Methodology
Participants
The principal participants in this study were teacher candidates specializing in high
school mathematics attending a one-year, post-Bachelor’s degree teacher education
program in Ontario during the 2003 - 2004 academic year. Of the 136 teacher candidates in
TEACHER EDUCATION ADMISSION CRITERIA 9
this specialization, 102 agreed to participate in the study. Of those participating, 62 (61.8%)
were female and 38 (38.2%) were male. These proportions are similar to the overall
proportions for this specialization: 58.1 per cent female and 41.9 per cent male. The teacher
candidates had diverse educational training, experience, and expertise in mathematics;
however, all had met the requirement of a minimum of two university-level mathematics
courses.
Because this study required collecting judgments about teacher candidates’
preparedness to teach from their instructors in their specialty area and from their associate
teachers, we also requested the participation of the instructors and associate teachers. All
teacher candidates specializing in high school mathematics were instructed by two
mathematics instructors, both of whom consented to participate. Both were high school
teachers from school districts in Ontario who were seconded to teach in the teacher
education program. Both had at least 17 years exper-ience teaching in the regular school
system. One of the instructors had four years experience teaching in an initial teacher
education program; the other had less than one year of experience.
The teacher candidates were required to complete two practice teaching sessions,
each four and a half weeks long. One session was in the specialty area of mathematics; the
other was in the teacher candidates’ other area of specialization. For 40 of the teacher
candidates, their mathematics practice teaching was in the second session; we requested the
associate teachers with whom they were working to provide judgements of the teacher
candidates’ preparedness for teaching. Of the 40 associate teachers, 21 consented to provide
judgements.
GPA and Profile Ratings
The teacher candidates’ GPA and the ratings that had been assigned to their profiles
during the admission process were obtained from the program’s registrar. The GPA, an
average of the best fifteen courses from the applicant’s undergraduate degree, is expressed
as a percentage (recall that this program is a one-year, post-Bachelor’s initial teacher
education program); adjustments may be made for degrees from universities that use
different grading scales from those used by the teacher education program in the present
study.
The written admission profile for 2003 - 2004 asked applicants to “Describe three
significant teaching and/or teaching related experiences” and identify insights about
teaching and learning they gained from those experiences; to “Explain how you might
contribute to the education of students in today’s schools”; and “What additional
experiences, qualifications or other information relevant to your potential as a teacher do
you wish the Admissions Committee to consider?” Each profile was read holistically by two
reviewers (teacher education instructors and administrators from nearby school districts)
who assigned it a letter grade: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+ (a code of R was assigned
by the registrar to indicate special circumstances requiring further evaluation). The
reviewers then discussed and reached consensus on a grade for the profiles; if consensus
was not achieved, a third reviewer read the profile. For the analyses, the letters were
converted to numbers, ranging from 1 for R to 10 for A.
10 C. CASEY & R. CHILDS
Practice Teaching Performance
The anecdotal written evaluations completed by the associate teachers who
supervised the teacher candidates’ first and second practice teaching sessions were obtained
from the office that coordinates practice teaching. The associate teachers provided
comments on six aspects of teacher candidates’ performance: (a) planning, instruction, and
evaluation; (b) communication skills; (c) competence in curriculum areas; (d) diversity,
equity, and student involvement; (e) professionalism; and (f) classroom management. The
associate teacher also assigned an overall rating of pass or fail for the practice teaching
session. To make possible examination of the relationship between practice teaching
performance and the admission criteria and judgements of preparedness for teaching, it was
necessary to assign ratings to the anecdotal evaluations. Based on a careful reading of the
associate teacher’s comments and pass/fail rating for each practice teaching session for
each teacher candidate, the first author assigned a letter grade (A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C,
C-, D+, D, D-, or F) to each evaluation. Because each of the 102 teacher candidates had two
practice teaching sessions, a total of 204 evaluations were completed by associate teachers.
A randomly selected 10 of these 204 evaluations were also graded independently by
another instructor in the program. Both the first author and the other instructor had
previously served as associate teachers. To assess inter-rater reliability of the grades on
these ten evaluations, Cohen’s Kappa was calculated. The Cohen’s Kappa obtained, r = .62,
indicating substantial agreement between the two graders and suggesting that the ratings
were replicable. Thereafter, the first author rated the remainder of the practice teaching
evaluations. For the analyses, the letter grades assigned were converted to numbers, ranging
from 1 for F to 13 for A+.
Teaching Preparedness Survey
Judgments of the teacher candidates’ preparedness for teaching were collected from
(a) the mathematics instructors, (b) the supervising teachers for practice teaching, and (c)
the teacher candidates specializing in high school mathematics, using a survey adapted by
the first author from the New York City Teacher Survey (Silvernail, 1998). Only the
original survey’s Section B, which is specific to teacher preparedness, was used. Section B
was comprised of 40 items rated using a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = not
at all to 5 = very well. Factor analyses by Silvernail (1998) of the original instrument had
established five sub-scales based on 36 of the items: Promote Student Learning (14 items),
Teach Critical Thinking and Social Development (8 items), Use Technology (5 items),
Understand Learners (5 items), and Develop Instructional Leadership (4 items). Silvernail
found these subscales to have acceptable internal consistency (that is, consistently positive
intercorrelations among the items on a subscale), with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .82
to .94. Evidence for discriminant validity was provided by Darling-Hammond, Chung, and
Frelow (2002), who found that teachers who had completed a teacher education program
scored higher on the measures of preparedness than those who entered teaching without
such preparation.
The survey was completed by the teacher candidates, their instructors, and the
teachers who supervised their practice teaching. The instructions differed slightly among
the groups, asking the teacher candidates to judge their own preparedness and the
instructors and associate teachers to judge the teacher candidates’ preparedness.
Using the judgements of the teacher candidates, the instructors, and the associate
TEACHER EDUCATION ADMISSION CRITERIA 11
teachers in this study, the internal consistency of the five subscales for each type of judges
was also computed. Cronbach’s alpha for the subscales ranged from .79 to .90 for the
teacher candidates and from .83 to .96 for the associate teachers. These values are
comparable to Silvernail’s (1998) finding of Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .82 to .94 and
are acceptable. For the instructors, Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .82 to .94 for four of the
five subscales. For the Understands Learners subscale, however, the item, “Work with
parents and families to better understand students and to support their learning,” was not
positively correlated with the other items and so was removed from further analyses. With
the removal of this item, Cronbach’s alpha for this subscale was .75.
Data Analyses
Prior to analyzing the data, the variables were examined for missing data. No
variable had more than 5 per cent of the observations missing, which was considered
acceptable. Where data were missing, the mean value for that variable across observations
was inserted.
Descriptive statistics were computed for relevant teacher candidate characteristics
and educational background (i.e., gender, age, mathematics-related degree, and highest
degree obtained).
To determine the relationship between performance in the first and second practice
teaching sessions, a Spearman rank order correlation was computed. To compare the
judgments of perceived preparedness of teacher candidates by the three groups, a series of
paired sample t-tests was conducted. Because of the multiple comparisons, a Bonferroni
adjustment was used and the criterion for statistical significance was reduced to .025 (i.e., α
= .05/2 = .025). Finally, to assess the relationships among incoming GPA, profile ratings,
performance in the two practice teaching sessions, and the judgments of preparedness,
Pearson product-moment correlations were computed.

Results

In the following sections, we first describe the teacher candidates who participated
in this study and then examine the relationships between their scores on the criteria used for
admission – that is, their entering GPA and written profile – and their performance in the
practice teaching sessions and judgments of their preparedness for teaching.
Demographics, Educational Background, and Admission Criteria of the Teacher
Candidates
As noted previously, 62 (61.8%) of the 102 teacher candidates who partic-ipated
were female and 38 (38.2%) were male. Forty-four (43.1%) were between the ages of 20
and 25; 34 (33.3%) between 26 and 30, and 8 in each of the following age ranges: 31 to 35
(7.8%), 36 to 40 (7.8%), and over 40 (7.8%).
Seventeen (16.7%) participants had a university degree in mathematics, 76 (74.5%)
had mathematics-related degrees (e.g., engineering or science) and nine (8.8%) had degrees
that were not mathematics or mathematics related. Thirty-two participants (31.4%) had a
Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree, with 50 (49%) holding an
Hon-ours BA or Honours BSc. Sixteen (15.7%) had a Master of Arts or Master of Science
degree and 4 (3.9%) had a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
12 C. CASEY & R. CHILDS
The average entrance GPA for these teacher candidates was 78.9 per cent (SD =
6.19) with a range of 69.8 per cent to 94.3 per cent. Four (3.9%) of the participants in this
study received a profile rating of A; 54 (52.9%) received a B; 38 (37.3%), a C; 1 participant
(1.0%) received a D+; and 5 (4.9%) received an R. Unfortunately, profile rating
information for other teacher candidates in the program who did not participate in this study
was not available.
Practice Teaching Performance
In the first practice teaching session, 53 (52.0%) of the teacher candidates received
a rating between A+ and A-; 32 (31.3%), a rating between B+ and B-; 14 (13.8%), a rating
in the C range; 2 (2.0%), a rating of D+; and 1 (1.0%), a rating of F. In the second session,
performance improved significantly (the average rating was 10.64 [SD = 2.23] instead of
9.95 [SD = 2.56], t(101) = -2.32, p < .05), with 62 (60.8%) receiving a rating in the A
range; 28 (27.4%), a rating in the B range; and the remaining 12 (11.8%), a rating in the C
range. When the sessions were compared by specialty area instead of order, the average
rating was slightly lower for practice teaching in a mathematics classroom (M = 10.15, SD
= 2.66) than for practice teaching in another subject (M = 10.47, SD = 2.16), but the
difference was not statistically significant, t (97) = 1.01, p = .32.
A Spearman rank order correlation was computed to assess the relationship between
the ratings for the first and second practice teaching sessions. Results revealed a weak but
significant positive relationship (r = .23, p < .05). In other words, although there was some
similarity in the ordering of teacher candidates between the two sessions, only about five
per cent of the ordering of teacher candidates in one session was explained by the ordering
in the other session. The limited range of ratings, the varying expectations of the associate
teachers who completed the anecdotal evaluations, and the limited information available to
the researchers when they assigned ratings to these evaluations all likely contributed to this
weak relationship.
Relationships among Judgments of Teaching Preparedness
Table 1 summarizes the teacher candidates’ and the instructors’ judgements of the
teacher candidates’ preparedness for teaching. On four of the five subscales, instructors’
judgments of the teacher candidates’ preparedness were significantly more positive than the
teacher candidates’ own judgments. The exception was the Promote Student Learning sub-
scale, in which the instructors’ judgements were more positive, but not significantly so.